In My heart, It's More Than A Scar
by Diana Prallon
Summary: It was a well-known fact that these seemingly unnatural marks and cuts were a sign that you had been blessed with a soul mate; that the person that had been made for you was somewhere, living, breathing, waiting to meet you. [DracoxGinny]


**In my heart, it's more than a scar**

Ginny was nine when she started to dream of her own wedding – it was the first time she noticed a scratch in her knee that she did not remember getting. It was a well-known fact that these seemingly unnatural marks and cuts were a sign that you had been blessed with a soul mate; that the person that had been made for you was somewhere, living, breathing, waiting to meet you. They all had heard the tales – and not only fairy tales, but true stories. Her mother had gotten a bruise next to her nose, as if made by a glass when she was only six – that had been when her father had first gotten glasses.

She had waited eagerly for it – for the first sign of future happiness. After the scratch, she could almost hear the church bells signing her wedding, a whole life of bliss stretching for years: and not a moment too soon. Most her brothers had already gotten their fair share of scars – Bill's mostly revolved around his ankles, Percy was given elbow marks; Ron had them around his fingers. One, of course, could never truly say with Fred and George, since they were always half-covered in bruises and scratches that they never could explain – or at least, never wished to.

Charlie and Bill teased her about it – did she know Dumbledore had a knee scar shaped like the London subway? Mayhap she was to be his true love. The idea of being tied to such an old man – however powerful or wonderful – led her to tears and her mother to scolding them both. Even after that, she still feared that she was fated to be matched to someone that wasn't, well, like her. She always imagined her beloved as young, active and heroic; but what if he was none of these things?

The following year her imagination got new and more definite contours as she took her brothers to the Hogwarts Express and met Harry Potter for the first time. He was not dashing as soul mates were described to be, but he caught her eye and her heart at once. How wonderful would it be, to be loved by someone like him. She dreamed of it, but she knew it could not be: there was no mark in her forehead, no lightning shape surging under her fringe.

And yet, the following year made it clear that there would be no one else for her: not even Hogwarts with all its wonders called to her as his green eyes did. She fretted and worried, and eventually her curiosity won her embarrassment and she asked her mother: would it be possible for someone to have a soul mate and not share one particular scar?

Of course, she hadn't been fooled for even one second; she knew exactly why Ginny was asking; and her words were as true as they could be. No one had ever passed through what that boy had, clearly the common rules weren't for him. It might be that his true mate would not share the distinct scar left by You Who Must Not Be Named on him.

Ginny wanted to believe her, but she was not sure if she could. Maybe her mother was just being nice, maybe she was being incredibly silly. Then again, who else could she ask? Of course, the answer was close enough, in the tip of her fingers, in the drying and disappearing letters as she told Tom all about her wishes and fears: could it be that Harry would one day be hers?

Tom, smart as he was, had all the answers: of course it would not be like every other case, was not Harry the greatest hero that they had ever had? Had he not vanquished the dark lord when he couldn't even speak? And even if it had marked her in the same place, then, would it not have vanished as she grew and her skin stretched, hiding underneath her flaming hair?

If there was someone she could trust, it was Tom.

If there was someone she could never trust, it was Tom.

There was something wrong with her, with him, with everything he made her do. She no longer knew who she was, who he was, and why did everything seemed so hard to remember? She left him, but not her hope – and then, the proof that dangerous as he was, he had been right about her and Harry, why else would he, of all people, get the diary?

But she could not allow it – could not allow _him_ to suffer as she had; he might bear the scars of her body, but she had no wish to share those of her soul. What would Tom tell him? What would he do? Hard as it was, he needed to get it back. She needed to get him safe. She might feel tainted until the depths of her soul, but while some part belonged to Harry, she would be safe, as long as he wasn't caught in it too.

When she opened up her eyes to find his green ones staring back, she cried. He had saved her, more than her life, more than her soul, he had saved her dreams as her hand hurt while his was swollen.

For almost four years, that knowledge held her while the whole world fell apart. It was hard – to strive to be his equal, to be worthy of such a match, but it was her fate to do it, her fate to manage it, and she continued. Sometimes it was easy – to make the right choices, to fight, to be by his side when he sent her away – it was just who she was.

If at some moments she wondered if she had been wrong – how could he forget? And how lucky he was that he could, that his soul had not been tainted too? – she silenced it staring at some small marks that she was sure he also had somewhere.

Ginny did not fully doubt it for a single moment, not for years, not until Harry himself marked her as belonging to someone else.

Someone that was not heroic, not brave, not right.

Someone she never wished to belong to.

She felt her skin spreading, breaking, inflaming in an agony that did not make way outside her throat. Ginny ran to the bathroom to find the most terrifying mark: spreading from her neck to her belly, splitting her body in two, crossing under her breasts and reaching her shoulder blades. No one could survive such injure, not when it was more than an echo.

But Harry was fine – terrified, pale, but fine. There were no marks in his body, only in his eyes, as he confided in them what he had done and destroyed the hopes of her life.

Because these scars – those awful, deep, terrifying scares had belonged to Draco Malfoy – and part of Ginny's soul was his too. These scars, these marks, these lines spoke of a man that had sold himself to Voldemort; and that was her fault too: how could he resist it, when she had opened his own soul to him years ago? When he had yelled at all the mudbloods and blood traitors that it was their time next, it had been her own words in his mouth, through the dark damming command of Tom.

Now Draco Malfoy had given himself up to the Dark Lord, just as she had before, and there was nothing she could do, not even cry. She did not know him, but she had always loved him – parts of him, parts of her, completely intertwined – and for the first time she thought of those other stories, the stories of people torn apart when their hearts and souls were pulled to a different side than that of their actions. The war was turning the world apart, and soon, it would do the same to her heart – and his too, no doubt.

So when Harry walked inside the Common Room in the midst of the celebration, the moment of light and happiness in the middle of the darkness that her life had been since he marked her as Malfoy's and not his, she threw her arms around him and enveloped his lips with hers. She would never truly have him, she would never truly be his, but she would not surrender, she would not give up, she would remember the purity of her dreams and cling to them even as they turned to smoke, even as they faded, even as the kiss she had always wished for faded into nothing next to the memory of the desperate light in Draco's eyes.


End file.
